Optical pyrometers are well known in the art, having found extensive use in applications in severe environments or where temperature magnitudes prohibit the use of conventional contact pyrometric techniques. These devices calculate the temperature of a target from the radiant energy provided therefrom. An algorithm is used to determine the temperature of the surface by measuring total radiation in a given wavelength interval or by looking at the distribution of optical energy as a function of wavelength. The higher the temperature of the source, the greater the proportion of optical energy in the shorter wavelengths.
Optical pyrometers have been developed to measure the temperature of turbine blade surfaces even in an operating jet engine whose environment necessarily includes the combustion flame fireball. To accurately measure the turbine blade temperature, the optical pyrometer must be capable of correcting the measurements to eliminate the effect of the presence of reflected combustion flame radiation which is mixed in and obscures radiation from the turbine blade.
Dual spectral area optical pyrometers have been developed in order to differentiate between reflected and emitted radiation received from a target turbine blade and compensate for the error in the observed temperature that the reflected radiation introduces. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,222,663, Gebhart, et al discloses a dual band (two color) optical pyrometer which comprises two separate pyrometers. Each pyrometer sees a different but overlapping component of the total spectral range of the light or radiation from the turbine blade.
The pyrometers are sensitive at different wavelength bands and will be affected differently by the energy from the turbine blade surface. When the light (radiation) from the fireball is reflected off the blade, the pyrometer set to detect the shorter wavelength band is more responsive to the additional reflected energy, and its output signal increases in greater proportion than does that of the longer wavelength pyrometer. Therefore, an increase or decrease in the amount of the reflected radiation or, at high reflection conditions, to the temperature of the combustion flane will result in a proportionally higher or lower value of temperature indicated in the short wavelength pyrometer.
For each pyrometer an algorithm calculates the temperature of the turbine blade from the light it receives. This process, which requires linearizing the relationship between the received power and temperature, is complex and degrades the temporal responsivity of the system. The linearized temperature signals indicate the equivalent black body temperature of the turbine blade. However, the reflected energy of the much hotter combustion flame will cause each of the two pyrometers to yield different temperature values, both higher than the true blade temperature. An additional temperature correction algorithm receives each channel temperature and determines the magnitude of the temperature error. The temperature correction signal is a function of the difference between the two pyrometer temperatues, which results from the spectral range of each pyrometer, the fireball equivalent black body temperature and the fraction of reflected radiation present in each pyrometer signal. Computation of a temperature correction signal is a laborious, hardware intensive process and has limited the applicability of dual spectra optical pyrometers to ground based diagnostic use.